Sickle cell disease is a very common hemoglobinopathy; it is the most common genetic disease with high mortality and morbidity worldwide. The high prevalence of cholelithiasis in sickle cell disease is supported by several studies. It varies from 9 to 15% in children with sickle cell disease [4] and would increase with age.
The main objective is to describe the clinical, biological and therapeutic data of cholelithiasis in children with sickle cell disease. This was a single-center study, with retrospective retrospective collection of data. The study took place from March 15, 2010 to December 31, 2020. All children aged 15 years or older presenting a major form of sickle cell disease who had undergone an abdominal ultrasound during the study period were included. Data were collected from patients’ clinical data and entered into SPSS DATA software. The analysis was done by DATA.
The statistical test used was that of chi² with a significance threshold of p<0.005. Seventy sickle cell patients were enrolled according to our inclusion criteria. The average age of all sexes of the patients was 12 years and 8 months with extremes of 3 and 15 years. The female gender was in the majority with 51.4% of cases. The homozygous SS profile was the majority phenotype, i.e. 80%.
Abdominal pain is the most common (98%) revealing sign of cholelithiasis, sometimes associated with vomiting and nausea.
Thirty-four patients or 48.57% had microlithiasis, 28.57% had biliary sludge. A gallstone was found in 2 patients or 2.8% and 14 lithiasis clusters in 20%.
